UBS in London has added another trader to its asset-backed securities team, bringing the European ABS trading team to three. Craig Colenso, senior credit analyst focusing on asset-backed securities and structured finance at Insight Investments in London, starts in December with a focus on sterling product.
The build up is driven by increasing ABS volumes and complexity. "ABS used to be dominated by vanilla flow trading with a one-off highly structured value trade here and there. Now we're seeing a much more structured environment on the asset side in ABS, with the rise of ABS credit default swaps, correlation trading, and so on," observed Steve Skerrett, head of asset-backed securitization and origination. "Given all the opportunities out there, we felt we needed a couple more dedicated ABS traders to adequately take advantage of them."
Colenso joins Enrique Garcia, an ex-associate in ABS trading at Citigroup in London, who started in August and focuses on euro fixed rate and sterling floating rate product. Both report to Ximo Vicent, head of ABS trading, who himself joined UBS from Citi (BW, 5/31). As part of an effort to address the increased demand for ABS credit derivatives, UBS recently hired Henry Schmeltzer as head of European structured ABS (BW, 9/6).
At Insight Investments, Colenso reported to Andrew Evans, head of credit research. Evans said the buy-sider has hired Vicky Jensen, surveillance analyst at Fitch Ratings in London covering commercial mortgage-backed and whole business securities, to replace Colenso on the research team. Jensen had left Fitch and could not be reached.
At Citi, Garcia reported to Ron Miao, head of ABS trading in London. Miao said Citi has no immediate plans to add to its team.
